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The â€śEast German National Park Programmeâ€ť of 1989/1990 was considered a coup de main, resulting in the immediate protection of 4.5% of the GDRâ€™s territory. The authors of this programme later described the approach and its success as â€śusing a window of opportunity during the transition phase of state and nation.â€ť This leads to the question whether a stateâ€™s transformation period constitutes a preferred time frame and momentum for spatial conservation success.
Conservation efforts in Azerbaijan showed a similar success as the East German National Park Programme. In a country with the highest biodiversity in Europe, increasing the share of protected land from 5.0 % in 2001 to 10.3% in 2015 constitutes a remarkable achievement. Thus, the country became an interesting case study regarding the question whether â€śhot moments for conservationâ€ť exist in times of political and governmental changes, and if spatial success in nature conservation can be linked to political transformation. This thesis attempts to identify how the protected area (PA) network in Azerbaijan could be expanded by 100%, what achievements were made, and what conditions still need to be met for the quantitative and qualitative improvement of the PA network. To this end, I consider this increase under landscape-ecological, historical and institutional aspects. The local culture and political pre-sets in the country present additional issues for analysing the past 25 years of nature conservation in Azerbaijan.